WHEN EVIDENCE CONFRONTS POLITICS: COMPETING RATIONALITIES IN THE SMART STATE

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1 WHEN EVIDENCE CONFRONTS POLITICS: COMPETING RATIONALITIES IN THE SMART STATE Dirk Van Damme Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division OECD/EDU

2 Outline What s happening to the state? The smart state Knowledge competing with politics Some conclusions on smart state and reflexive governance 2

3 WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE STATE? 4

4 What is happening to the state? The disempowered state The traditional Enlightenment concept of the state (Thomas Hobbes Leviathan) as the regulatory centre bringing rational order into chaotic societies is waning because of complexity, the changing nature of communication, new forms of social action and the dispersion of feedback mechanisms The notion of public good is eroding as a consequence of increasing complexity, diversity, and fragmentation of life-worlds; it is not always clear what the common good exactly is 5

5 What is happening to the state? The disempowered state Representative democracy faces many problems and democratic institutions are losing public trust; various new forms of political action and movements are emerging on the local-global axis with unclear links to the national democracies Traditional institutions and regulatory tools of democratic nation-states increasingly fall short before the regulatory needs engendered by contemporary challenges; yet, international organisations don t have the legitimacy to take strong action 6

6 What is happening to the state? The disempowered state The state looses its sovereign monopoly in regulatory functions distributed power mechanisms are becoming very powerful Markets Self-regulatory practices (professions, communities) Civil society Old and new social movements Partnerships, networks 7

7 What is happening to the state? The disempowered state Conclusion: The modern, democratic nation-state has to compete with other rationalities than the one defined as regulation for the sake of the public good on the basis of democratic legitimacy Technocracy Para-political power of interest groups Local autonomy Supra-national regulation 8

8 The disempowered state in education Decentralisation and local autonomy Choice and competition Multiplication of governance levels: multilevel governance Multiplication of actors and stakeholders: multistakeholder governance Professionalisation Civil society, popular conservatism Authoritarianism: states fighting back? 10

9 THE SMART STATE 11

10 The smart state The financial crisis, turning into a public debt crisis, has revived the debate on the role of the state Difficult choices and trade-offs, putting neo- Keynesian welfare state equilibrium against neoliberal minimal state concepts Inclusive growth : inequality on the agenda as a necessary corollary to growth Shift in the debate from size towards quality of state intervention and regulation Move towards the strategic or smart state (Philip Aghion, OECD s NAEC project): reduce number and size of public interventions, but improve governance 12

11 The smart state Concept of the smart state tries to strengthen governance by drawing on multiple sources of regulation (coming from various ideological origins) Self-regulation of individuals and families (neoconservatism of for example Theodore Dalrymple) Self-regulating markets (neo-liberalism of for example James Tooley) Multiple levels of public policy regulation (for example cities) Self-organised civil society, networking, crowd-sourcing Expert knowledge and innovation generated by scientific research 13

12 The smart state Conditions for smart state developments Investments in knowledge, R&D, big data, smart infrastructure Trust, transparency and inclusiveness Policies that depart from simple command-andcontrol and move to sophisticated forms of governance, capable of pulling together various policy resources Leadership and public debate Innovations, scaling up and transferred from one regulatory level to another 14

13 KNOWLEDGE COMPETING WITH POLITICS 15

14 Knowledge competing with politics Modern policies become increasingly knowledge-intensive Yet, knowledge doesn t seem to find its way easily into policy development Evidence-informed policy is growing, but at a slower pace than expected or needed Many examples of researchers feeling frustrated about the knowledge demands of policy-makers and the use of research evidence 16

15 Knowledge competing with politics The Two communities theory (Caplan) Values, language, value systems, reward systems and, hence, behaviour of scientists and policy makers are too different; they live in different worlds Conflicting concepts and theories of knowledge Hence, increasing or improving communication will not help a lot 17

16 Research(ers) as seen by policy makers Rarely willing to step out of their comfort zone and to take responsibility Use different concepts of useful or useable knowledge than policy makers Issues about research quality in education Ideology in educational research Research leads only to very partial answers More interested with their own interests than with the impact of research on the public interest Are science and research generating autonomous sources of legitimacy, capable of challenging democratic legitimacy? 18

17 Competing sources of knowledge Expert knowledge and research evidence finds itself in a more competitive relationship to other sources of knowledge: Personal anecdotes, everyone is an expert in education teachers know best Common sense, parents know best Community wisdom Political ideologies and well-established, unquestioned ideas about education 19

18 Merging two worlds? Integrating experts directly in policy development processes: expertocracy Not very successful: conflicting role definitions, illusion of neutrality, political alliances Legitimacy problems Who has more legitimacy: experts making a case of educational innovation or a pressure group of parents and teachers opposing any educational reform Acknowledging the reality of conflicting rationalities, understanding the different rationalities, while seeking to improve communication seems to offer better prospects 20

19 SOME CONCLUSIONS 26

20 Smart state reflexive governance Distributed power and risk of fragmentation ask for new forms of public governance At the same time demands for smarter (smaller, more flexible, ), not bigger, forms of regulation Knowledge can be the cement linking various forms and levels of governance But a narrow concept of research knowledge falls short in feeding reflexive governance Multiple forms and sources of knowledge will have to talk to each other 27

21 Smart state reflexive governance Concept of Reflexive governance : High-quality and well-communicated research evidence Teachers as knowledge professionals Schools as learning organisations Informed communication among stakeholders New knowledge ecologies A high systemic capacity for learning 28

22 Thank you! 29